Mines

Happy St. Patty’s to all you Irish ba****** out there. Sláinte!

Seems like all we ever hear about lately is drones causing damage and mines helping close the Straits of Hormuz. At least mines can be cleared, right?

Barely two months ago, a striking and slightly forlorn naval convoy made its way out of the Gulf.

Sitting on the deck of the heavy-lifting carrier Seaway Hawk were four recently retired United States naval vessels heading to the scrapyard.

The departure of the last four Avenger-class anti-mine vessels in the Gulf marked the closure of a chapter that might not have been glamorous in its operations, but was long considered critical to protecting trade.

In a nutshell, the old style wood-hulled minesweeper is thought to have seen its day. They did yeoman’s service in earlier times, helping to clear Iranian-laid minefields. But they are being replaced by – wait for it – modified Littoral Combat Ships. Thought you had heard the last of the LCS, eh? To quote Big Jake – not hardly.

Three of these aluminium-hulled trimarans are now believed to be in the region: the USS Canberra, USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara.

Their equipment includes Raytheon’s new AN/AQS-20C sonar mine-hunting system.

Fitted to remotely controlled drone boats, four high-resolution sensors can detect, classify and identify mine-like objects, from the seafloor to the near-surface in a single pass, the manufacturer says.

Another gadget is the AN/AES-1 Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS) fitted to an MH-60 Seahawk helicopter.

This detects and pinpoints surface and near-surface moored sea mines using light detection and ranging technology (LiDAR).

Once detected, the mines get destroyed by the Archerfish Airborne Mine Neutralisation System, (AMNS-AF). Presumably the system is airborne, not the mines. There is only one problem – some of it has been operational less than a year and none is battle tested.

A US navy briefing on early operations found that the drone boats were unreliable and needed lengthy maintenance, the news outlet Hunterbrook reported.

Sensors have also reportedly struggled to identify mines.

The Brits also pulled their last minesweeper.

Until recently, the Royal Navy kept four vessels in Bahrain. However, the same month the Avengers departed, their last UK counterpart, the Hunt-class HMS Middleton, also left.

The Royal Navy and the French navy have been working together on an upgrade to their drone technology for mine-hunting, called the Maritime Mine Counter Measures (MMCM) programme.

The Royal Navy’s system will involve unmanned drone speedboats working from a mothership to tow sonar sensors that can find the mines. The Saab Multi-Shot Mine Neutralisation System (MuMNS) will then destroy them.

However, the technology is understood to be still under trial.

It ain’t pretty. If the Iranians heavily mine the area, we will be trying to clear it under potential fire from shore missiles – a very ugly prospect. Read the article – it’s worth it.  The Telegraph

***  Just got a little stranger. I wrote this on Sunday afternoon. Sunday evening TWZ reports hat the Tulsa and Santa Barbara have shown up….in Penang, Malaysia. Huh? One of the most important chokepoints in the world is said to be mined, and the ships to deal with it get moved several thousand miles away?***

Hearkens back to WWI – if a British skipper rammed and sank a German submarine, they got a reward and a gold watch presented by the King. The Germans made up a bunch of special mines that looked like sub conning towers – when a Brit rammed them and they exploded, the merchant captain just thought he got hit by a torpedo just exiting the tube. Too many sunken ships later, the Admiralty said the sub had to be 100% verified first, ie: by submerging. So the Germans designed a mine that would float on the surface until it heard the acoustic signature of a ship headed to ram it, at which point it sank – and BOOM the Brits lost another ship.   (From “The Sea Devil’s Fo’c’sle” by Felix Von Luckner and Lowell Thomas.)

Category: Iran, Navy, UK